March 7, 2006

My First Sudoku Puzzle

I have a Sudoku game on my Linux workstation at home, and I just finished my first sudoku puzzle. I’m not sure I really see the addiction, but maybe I’ll revisit that in a few weeks. I solved puzzle #36 in GNOME Sudoku in 26 minutes and 24 seconds. I have no idea if that’s good or bad. I’m assuming it’s probably so-so given that it’s my first one ever, and I spent all of 5 seconds reading the instructions. If that’s really bad, someone let me know where I can find a list of average scores or something. The difficulty rating was something like 0.27, but I don’t know if that’s out of a total of 1.0 or what.

I decided to try it because of an article I saw on the BBC about how to become “smarter” in a week that mentioned playing sudoku puzzles. I can’t imagine doing these puzzles on paper! I only had to make a few alterations on my puzzle, but I’m assuming that as they get harder you end up having to go and practically erase the entire thing.